SunnyHills Taiyangtang (Sun Cake House)

In 1954 the couple Lin Shao-song and He Xiu-mei tasted the malt-sugar pastry made by the baker Wei Qing-hai, known as "Master A-ming," and were so impressed that they hired him and opened the Taiyangtang bakery, first at the corner of Jiguang and Minquan streets and later that year at No. 23, Zihyou Road Section 2, regarded as the birthplace of the sun cake.

Taiyangtang sparked a cluster of rival sun-cake shops along Zihyou Road Section 2, the famed "sun-cake battle zone," turning the sun cake into Taichung's emblematic speciality and souvenir carried home by nearly every visitor.

The sun cake wraps a malt-sugar filling in many layers of flaky pastry baked to a golden finish, the crust crisp and layered and the filling warm and sweet; the dough is folded again and again with oil-skin and oil-shortening until the crust is gossamer-thin and melts in the mouth, the falling crumbs often caught in the hand as it is eaten.

Taiyangtang is a Taichung bakery brand of more than seventy years' standing; Taiwan's time-honoured-shop system differs from mainland China's MOFCOM register, so no batch is recorded.